The Sacketts and the Clean Water Act

If it hasn’t become obvious yet, I’m a bit fed up with the ridiculousness. What ridiculousness you ask? Oh just open up the New York Times and read a bit. Soon you’ll be tearing out your hair and saying things like, “It’s the Environmental Protection Agency!” to your dog, you will simply respond by trying to eat the oatmeal out of your breakfast bowl.

Basically what’s happening is that this couple, the Sacketts, wanted to build a house on a piece of land they owned, which also happened to be wetlands. As you probably already know, wetlands are rapidly disappearing and are federally protected by the EPA.

So the EPA was like, “You need a permit to build a house on that land, because you’re polluting the wetlands.”

So the Sacketts were like, “Sorry, this is our land, we’re going to build on it no matter what.”

So the EPA was like, “Sorry, you knew it was a wetland when you bought the house. We’re telling you you can’t build their and pollute the area.”

So the Sacketts were like, “Pfft, you can’t tell us what to do. You need to go to court and get a court order before we fix our hot-mess of pollution. We’re going to sue! SUE SUE SUE!”

So they did. And now it’s going to the supreme court, and the Sacketts, unsurprisingly, have supporters in the form of GE and other large companies that would like a way to get around the Clean Water Act.

Basically, this seems really silly. To tell the EPA that they cannot enforce the Clean Water Act, or any other act, until they get a court order to do so not only weakens the agency’s ability to enforce rules, but also allows the potential polluters to continue polluting while the litigation battle wages on.

It seems much more reasonable, obvious, and appropriate to have the EPA enforce its orders, and if the people disagree with them, take them to court.